It burns Brightly
by Whas'up
Summary: There is a light that seperates them, children from mothers, students from teachers, there is a light that burns and calls and beckons. It steals them away in the night, consumes them, loves them, honors them and never lies. Light sings in the darkness and lures an Evil Witch, and a wholesome Fairy…to their fates.
1. Chapter 1

_The light awakens at sundown, just a flickering presence, not yet strong enough to perceive, but there, there and growing stronger by the minute._

_Waiting._

_waiting_

* * *

Cora sits at her daughters table, hands clasped in her lap, lips pursed as she waits with the grace of a Queen for Regina to enter the room with dinner. The silly girl makes her own food, serves herself, served her own son like a peasant would a squalling illiterate babe, the silly girl. This world is different, Regina says, it is no stigma to make your own food, and the way Regina says it, rolling her eyes as if Cora can't see her (which she certainly can), has Cora so enraged she almost throws Regina to the wall. But she doesn't, no, she seethes silently, looking at the dismal failure her daughter has become, and promises herself she will remake her, she will build Regina up anew.

Cora surreptitiously glances at the clock gracing the dining room wall, it's a heavy thing that chimes every hour and wakes Cora up every night. With a harsh inhale through her nose, Cora's pursed lips now tighten into a frown, dinner is _late_.

"Regina," she calls, voice cracking like a whip through the air, a scolding harnessed in one word.

Her daughter does not answer.

Cora pushes back her chair, features pulled taught in restrained anger as she glides to the door separating dining room and kitchen. It's something Regina hard learned early after all, when Mother calls…you _answer_.

But as she enters the room, warm from the oven and smelling lovely too, she feels magic in the air. Not her daughters, no, it's too tightly wound to be her daughters, Regina's magic is effortless, it's in her blood. This magic in the air, it's sickly and acrid and Cora's first thought is disgust as she feels it splash against her.

Regina stands by the oven, face pinched, eyes staring into the distance even as Cora stomps in front of her. "Regina," Cora repeats as she pushes the foreign magic away, away from herself and her daughter and the house, and it isn't until she's pushed it back beyond the yard that Regina looks at her.

Cora slaps her straight across the face. Hard

With a small gasp Regina reaches for her cheek, but her daughter thinks better of it and lowers her hand, "I'm sorry, mother," she says, the apology slipping from her lips after a moment. There's a delay now, between the blow and the apology, where when Regina was a child the apology would have been instant, that delay, mocking and strident, has Cora itching to slap Regina again.

Regina flinches, barely, a mere twitch around the eyes, "I'm sorry, mother," she repeats.

Cora smiles with a sigh, and reaches out to flatten her daughters hewn hair. Regina leans into the touch, she knows the danger has passed, "Do you know what that was, mother?" Regina asks, curious eyes, always so curious, her little girl, looking down at Cora (and how Cora hates that she must look up to meet Regina's eyes).

She does not know what it was, had never felt something so repulsive and repugnant before, it gnaws on her, but Regina, her darling child, need not see her mother fret. "It's gone now, no need to worry," Cora says, patting the reddening cheek she'd struck, her smile reaching her eyes as Regina bites her lip, but does not move away.

"I made lasagna," Regina says, reminding Cora how hungry she is.

Cora allows her daughter to portion out the food, her daughter serves her, in this, and in all else.

As she should.

* * *

_The light grows stronger, visible now it thrums, dimmer, brighter, dimmer, it beats to a shallow rhythm._

_dimmer, brighter, dimmer…_

_it grows stronger._

* * *

Under the pretense of 'taking out the trash' Granny had snuck away from the diner full of whiny late night dining non-tipping townsfolk, she stood now tapping her foot, shivering slightly with one arm wrapped around her stomach to stave off the chill in the dark winter night air. She grabs her super-secret pack of smokes from her apron, snaps the filter off a cig and lights it quickly, drawing in a lung full of potential cancer which immediately calms the old wolfs nerves.

Ruby had caught a case of 'food poisoning' that morning, a lie so preposterous and underwhelming that the old woman, with raised eyebrows and an unimpressed frown, had told her granddaughter if she was too hung over to work one more time she'd send her to the nuns for sobering up. And to learn the advantages of celibacy, Granny thought now, bitterly taking a drag off her cig, that girl could definitely learn some god damn celibacy.

Perhaps it is the splitting headache blooming behind her eyes affecting her normally pretty calm demeanor, but if one more person gives her a smile instead of a tip she's gonna grab her crossbow and teach these backwater fairytales some manners. Her 'calm demeanor' is also quite at odds with the verbal lashing she's planning in her head for Ruby, it's by no means easy to open, serve, and close a restaurant by ones lonesome. It's such a selfish thing for the girl to do to Granny, leaving her with it all in her lap, and under all the anger and agitation the old woman feels, there's hurt too, Ruby had chosen a night of debauchery and free flowing liquor over helping her grandmother. And it stings. Granny doesn't know how to make all of this alright.

With one more puff, pinched fingers holding the last tiny bit of her tobacco, Granny's shoulders slump, the day catching up to her. With a sigh she throws the stub of calming nicotine to the ground, grinding it under her heel and shuddering at the prospect of returning to serve people that she is pretty sure are incapable of feeding themselves without making colossal messes. She doesn't know how women raised as princesses manage to spill half their food on the floor _all the time_.

She's about to turn back into the diner, rubbing her hands along her arms with a shiver, when she sees it. A light. A dim light.

A light hovering over town square, green and sickly, floating about six feet off the ground.

That light, it sends a fire down her spine, the wolf in her, dormant and old and long unawakened suddenly roils deep in her gut, and she can hear it in her mind, growling a warning, and she can see the snarl of the wolf, angry and spiting with vicious eyes at the sickly light.

But Granny is the wolf, and so Granny knows…

she knows the wolf is afraid.

* * *

_The light shines, it shimmers, it enchants, but not for those with eyes that watch it now._

_No, it calls to other beings…_

_others like itself_

* * *

"Nova?"

Blue sighs, eyes pinching as she tsks her tongue. Nova should be resting, she'd been acting strange all day, and at about sundown, complaining of a headache, she'd retreated to the dorms. Blue was on her way to check on her before she herself went to bed when she'd found the subject of her concern up and facing the drafty window in the hall outside the bedrooms.

"Nova?" she repeats, approaching fairy turned nun.

The girl is caught in another day-dream, Blue is sure, the silly girl is more often than not staring out a window with a wistful expression. Nova has such potential, Blue can see it under everything else, but she is not happy, not here at the convent, and not without her dwarf.

In the old land it hadn't been possible, for their unprecedented love to flourish, Blue had squashed their dreams all those years ago, leading to a bitterness keenly felt on Nova's part. It had been for the best, for all of them…then. And now it seems fate, in place of the Blue Fairy, places itself between Leroy and Nova.

The dark curse that brought them here, it instilled in all the fairies, every single one, Blue most of all, a love of God. A love so profound that they gave themselves to His service, a love that lingers now, even remembering their old lives. Doubts, of course, creep upon them, the faith of some dwindles, but for most the solidarity found in their sisters keeps them from leaving.

And Nova is no exception. She's at war with herself; with every day that passes she is more and more a shell of the bright and bumbling woman Blue has known for twenty-eight years. She is caught in a miserable situation, between her love for god, and her love for Leroy.

Blue places a hand on Nova's shoulder, hand rubbing soothingly over the silky fabric of Nova's pajama top. "Astrid?" Blue tries, the girl answers to both her names, unlike others in the town.

But as another moment passes, and Nova doesn't so much as move, Blue's concern grows. With narrowed eyes she places herself before her apprentice, hands grasping at the younger woman's elbows, "Nova," she barks, looking up at Nova's eyes, hoping for a reaction, but there is none.

Blue turns her head, but doesn't tear her eyes from Nova's face, as she calls down the hall to the dorms. "Jude!" she calls, years of practice, as both a godmother and a mother superior, aiding her as she attempts to conceal the panic she's beginning to feel. "JUDE!"

A concerned group springs from the doorway, the called for Jude at the head as they bound to the blue fairy, all in their pjs. Blue has a hand on Nova's forehead, feeling the fever burning there, she grabs the girls hands and looks at Jude, "She needs a doctor, she's burning up."

"I'll grab the keys, and our coats," one of the sisters offers, already on the move, her frightened gaze on the still unresponsive Nova.

Blue shakes Nova a tad, looking up into her flushed face, when suddenly, she's slammed against the window by a green blow. The window she strikes shatters, and the sisters are screaming as glass falls down to rain on Blue as she crumples to the floor, luckily not having been thrown _through_ the window.

It wasn't Nova.

The green magic, sick and cloying makes itself felt in the very air as Nova steps back, glass shards embedding deep in the pads of her feet as she, with no emotion on her pretty face, walks down the hall, paying no heed to the calls of the frightened women behind her, and least of all to a shocked breathes that Blue emits.

Jude reaches for Nova, the only one in the hall with slippers on, she tries to grab her but Blue stops her. "Don't touch her!" she barks, her authority paramount even as she bleeds on the floor.

She scrambles up, unmindful of the glass on the floor as she follows Nova, struggling to catch up as she clutches her side. "Get the coats, and some shoes," she orders, visibly shaking.

"But we can't let her go!" Jude cries.

Blue wishes she could agree, but that green magic, it's the most powerful she's felt in a very, very long time.

"There's no way we can make her stay," she says.

* * *

**DISCLAIMER: ouat is not mine, it would be SUCH a different show I quarantee**.


	2. Chapter 2

_The light thrives, it breathes in the essence of those it draws._

_It wants them._

_it needs them_

_it loves them_

* * *

Cora wakes slowly, awareness settling over her in drifts and drabs. She grumbles softly about that damn clock, Regina's silly huge clock in the dining room that chimes so loudly. But it's another minute before she recognizes that the chimes are not sounding, no simple noise has awoken her, with a start she sits up in bed, pushing green and sick magic away from the house. The foreign magic has creeped its way back, more powerful and abhorrent than before, it's oozed around Cora's safe guards and snapped her from her slumber, trying to suffocate her.

She pushes it away, barely able too, and sweeps her legs off the bed, hands grasping in the darkness until she finds the door. Her nightgown billows around her form as she races down the hall to Regina's room, that magic, it had intent, and there's disquiet in Cora's gut that tells her that her daughter is in danger.

"Regina!" she yells, hiding her panic in anger as she pushes Regina's door open. Moonlight seeps in through the curtained window, exposing to Cora that Regina is not there. The blankets and bedding fall half on the floor from the ruffled bed, the room is distressingly empty, and Cora _knows_ that Regina is not here, has not been here for a large span of time.

Cora lets out a forceful breath, her mouth snapping closed as wrinkled hands pull back unruly hair. With a frown she closes her eyes and concentrates. She concentrates on dark hair and dark eyes, on a scared lip, she concentrates on her daughter, seeking her out with her magic and with her blood, and it's when she remembers the soft trill Regina used to make as a baby that she knows where she is, on where the green magic has drawn her. Cora raises her arms and disappears in cloud of smoke.

* * *

_The light sings, oh it sings and soars and _lives_ as it thrums._

_dimmer, brighter, dimmer_

_thrumming, thumping_

_dimmer, brighter, dimmer_

* * *

Granny thinks she probably should have called someone else.

Charming and Snow, coats thrown over their sleepwear, stand shivering as they observe the light, now much brighter than it had been when first spotted. The reaction though, to call for the king and queen, had been instinctual when confronted with something that so unnerved Granny. Now though, as two dumbfounded faces stare up at the light, shining bright upon them as they shrug, Granny wishes, with a roll of her eyes, that she'd called someone with magic instead.

"I don't know Granny, I guess we'll just have to leave it and see what happens," David says, the tall broadly built man shrugging as if it really isn't of any consequence. Snow nods by his side, tired eyes squinting as she yawns.

"You don't understand," Granny said, looking at the man, the boy, so much younger than herself, from over her glasses. She gestures at the light, voice and tone and stance serious, "That thing is dangerous, I know it, and something has to be done."

"But what, Granny? We don't even know what this thing is, let alone how to get rid of it," David says, cajoling voice trying to sway her to his side and it's _annoying_ as _fuck_.

"Look," she snaps, tirade at the tip of her tongue when Snow steps forward, eyes hard, eyebrows drawn down.

"Let's watch our tone," she says, as if she's dealing with a child in one of her classes.

Whoa, Granny thinks, a disbelieving snort escaping her, who the hell do you think you are? she wants to ask, before she remembers she's talking to Queen Snow White. But then right on the same stream Granny remembers she lives in _Maine_, and Maine doesn't have a Queen, and thank you very much Granny voted for Obama and he's the only person she would possibly take any patronizing from.

Granny opens her mouth to let loose when her ears catch it, old wolf ears hearing before Snow and David the sound of footsteps and hushed voices. Granny spins towards the sound, and lets out a relieved breath when she realizes it's the fairies, nuns rather.

But quickly any comfort Granny felt at having the nuns close evaporates, Nova at the head of the group dispels any false hope Granny had of the fairies fixing this situation. Nova's feet are bloody and bare; she's in her pajamas, coat thrown loosely over her shoulders, but her arms dangle free of the sleeves. Her face is blank and her eyes are wide and stares and stares into the light, she doesn't blink, doesn't turn her gaze from the brightness. The wolf in Granny howls.

"Blue," Granny calls, as she sees the diminutive woman a pace behind Nova. The Mother Superiors hair is undone, she's bent awkwardly and has an arm clutching her side, she's in a coat and pajamas, with ugly boots on her feet.

"Blue, what's happening?" Snow asks, rushing towards Nova, hands stretched out to touch her.

"Don't! Don't touch her," Blue wheezes, but it's enough to stop Snow, who turns her concern instead on the deathly pale Blue who sways in her steps.

"What happened?" she asks again.

Blue is looking at the light as well, narrowed eyes calculating, "It's this thing," she spits out, "there's a, a," she gesticulates wildly as she searches for the right word, "a _sick_ magic in the air, it's emitting from this light, I can feel it. It's drawing Nova towards it."

David steps forward, jaw squared as he reaches and grabs Nova's bicep, totally ignoring the cry of 'don't' that come from both Blue and Granny. Granny has _no idea_ what he was hoping to achieve, but she thinks being thrown to the ground several feet away while gasping for breath was decidedly not it. Snow runs to her husband's side, shocked little gasps escaping from her mouth every step. But Ruby gets to him first, surprising them all with her sudden appearance. Ruby manhandles David into sitting and once Snow has her arms wrapped around his neck she stands and approaches Granny.

"Granny," she says, voice questioning and nervous as she looks up at the burning light, and then back to her grandmother. "This thing had my hackles rising all the way from home, what the hell is it?"

They never really were touchy feely type people, but Granny is overcome in this moment by how much she appreciates Ruby, how much she loves her, she wraps Ruby in a one armed embrace and the much younger woman seems to melt into it, the tension in her shoulders relaxing.

Granny and Ruby both hear it though, the soft padding of bare feet on concrete, they pull away from each other, faces pointed towards the sound and they are the first to see Regina Mills walking towards them, wearing silk pajama bottoms and a Eurythmics band tee that's way too big.

* * *

_The light burns so bright, it shines, and dances and oh, oh_

_they are so close_

_the light beckons._

* * *

Blue is very old, very, very old, her power as a fairy in the old world lending her years beyond measure, but when she looks into that sick growing light, something in her, something deep and unexplainable, recognizes that it harkens back to before her lifetime. It should not _be_. It should not exist.

And yet here it is, it is repulsive and feeling it in the air around her, having it touching her skin, makes her almost physically sick. The cracked ribs from her blow to the window aren't helping much either really. But she walked with Nova, never letting the girl out of her sight, even as Jude and the other sisters begged her to rest, to let them take her to the hospital, she didn't let Nova out of her sight. But now, standing so close to the light, standing before the light that drove Nova into the night, Blue has to sit down, her strength leaves and her legs collapse just as she catches sight of the Evil Queen, looking far less evil than usual in her too big shirt and makeup less face.

Snow rockets up from the ground just as Blue falls, she snarls and stands with her arms outstretched as if to protect everyone from the deposed Mayor.

But everyone watches silently as the dark haired woman, far shorter than normal without her heels, comes to stop unmoving before the light, blank gaze staring and staring just like Nova's. "Regina," Snow snaps, disgust in her voice as she stalks towards the woman she'd once called step-mother.

"Don't touch her!" Blue calls in exasperation, she half expects Snow to be as ignorant as her husband and do it anyway, but at the last moment Snow stops, a foot away from Regina, her back stiff. There's a bruise under Regina's right eye, on the high cheekbone, it's ugly and Blue finds herself wincing at it before remembering that she's looking at the woman that had cursed them all. But without make up, and with bedhead hair, Regina is a pretty woman, girl really, to Blue who is centuries old, she is a pretty girl just like Nova, and, it might be the pain driving her mad, but Blue does feel sympathy for the Evil Queen in that moment. She could never imagine hitting Nova, and Nova isn't even her daughter, she doesn't know how Cora does it.

"Regina," Snow says again, and Blue can hear how she spits out the name, and doesn't fault her. Blue shakes herself, Regina deserves her hatred, deserves all their hatred.

Snow is thrown back, and Blue blinks at the suddenes of it, but it's not green that does it, it's dark blue and Cora arrives in a cloud of smoke, snarling in her nightgown, "Get away from my daughter."

* * *

**Disclaimer: I wish it was the Regina show.**


End file.
